by Evelyn James
“In some ways it is not so bad,” O’Harris smiled wistfully. “That room held a lot of memories of my uncle’s sad fate.”
“Yes, I can imagine.”
They fell silent for a while, each lost in their own thoughts and uncertain how to restart the conversation. Clara finally could not bear to be silent any longer.
“You never finished telling me how you made it back to England,” she said.
O’Harris glanced up, his hazel eyes becoming shadowed for a moment, before he lightly smiled.
“You know, sometimes when I sit here in the evenings, I think about all I have been through and I realise that some would envy my time on that island,” he laughed. “In a way it was a tropical paradise. The sun was always warm and seemed to shine every day. Apparently I had missed the monsoon season when it rains continuously. I had been lucky in a lot of ways. The water they pulled me from was full of sharks, the islanders considered it quite amazing that I had not been eaten.
“There were great palm trees and all manner of tropical fruits to eat. The natives had a largely vegetarian diet, occasionally enlivened by fish they had caught, but the sharks made fishing a precarious business. They fed me well enough and were very hospitable, though I couldn’t understand them and I failed to grasp the language even after being there several weeks. My excuse for such impoliteness was that I regularly slipped in and out of a fever and was delirious for a great part of the time.
“And then I caught some sort of tropical illness. The natives had a name for it which I can’t pronounce. I became severely ill and there were clearly concerns for me among the locals. I would occasionally drift up from my delirium and see their worried looks. I have to say, all the time I was in their care they were extremely good to me and I must have been a nuisance for them. Anyway, as I told you before, there is a Christian mission that regularly comes across from the mainland to the island. They bring over supplies and goods, such as toys for the children and clothes. They also bring over a doctor and, naturally, a pastor who is endeavouring during these haphazard visits to convert the populace.
“The mission doctor was brought to me and presumably told how I was found and the sickness I had contracted. He was American and spoke to me in English, asking questions which I was only half able to answer. He finally decided I needed to be shipped to the mainland and taken to a regular hospital. I was stretchered onto the launch the mission had used to get to the island and taken on the short journey to the coast of America. I don’t remember much. The journey exhausted me and I was hardly fit to begin with.”
O’Harris shook his head, remembering that strange time.
“That was when I began to struggle to know what was real and what was part of my feverish delusions,” he said. “Some of the things that happened… I still can’t say for sure if they were actual events or mere dreams. I know I ended up in a hospital and there were a lot of doctors and nurses about me for a while. I don’t think they knew if I would live or not. I was in a ward with other men, and I drifted in and out of consciousness. I lost hours that way.
“None of this was helped by the great sense of guilt I felt over my co-pilot. I kept thinking that if I had not planned this trip, if I had not had this wild idea about flying across an ocean, then he would still be alive. I had no idea he had been rescued and that everyone was mourning over me. I beat myself up over my failings. I made them my cross to bear and when I was sane enough to do so, I flogged myself over the accident and my co-pilot’s imagined death.
“Around this time things became very strange. I sunk into myself and no one could reach me. I felt as though I existed in a bubble and everyone else around me was meaningless. When I was not delirious I was simply silent. People spoke to me, asked me questions, but I couldn’t seem to hear them. I understood later that I had shut down so much that no one knew who I was or where I came from. The mission doctor was convinced I was English and my flying jacket suggested to him that I was an airman. A report was printed in the US papers asking if anyone might know who I was. Apparently, they intended to ask The Times to print a similar report over in England, but before that was necessary the notice was spotted by my co-pilot, who had also been recovering in an American hospital after the accident. He had stayed behind in the country for a while, lapping up the publicity he was gaining as a survivor of an air crash at sea.”
O’Harris laughed to himself.
“All the time I was worrying about him being dead and he was telling the world about how he survived and mourning my loss! Anyway, he saw the notice and I suppose he hoped, as much as guessed, that the man they were referring to was me. He came all the way down to the hospital to see me.
“I remember the moment he walked onto the ward. I thought he was a ghost come to haunt me. I started to…” O’Harris paused, a flush of colour flooded his face. “I started to weep. I have to admit to it Clara, even though I am ashamed.”
“I don’t see why you should be,” Clara told him firmly, squeezing his hand again. “You had been through an awful ordeal and to see the man you thought dead must have come as a dreadful shock on top of everything else.”
“It was,” O’Harris concurred. “There he was, standing before me, and I thought I was gone truly mad. But then a nurse came over and spoke to him, she must have been asking him if I was actually Captain O’Harris, because then she came to me and patted my shoulder and told me everything was going to be all right, and she used my name.”
O’Harris stopped, the memory of that moment slipping back all too vividly.
“I came round after that. The nurse promised me that the man before me was alive and very real. He came and sat beside me and we talked, well, he mostly talked and I just listened and nodded. He said how when the ‘plane crashed down he was flung into the water and lost sight of me quite quickly. We had both been wearing life jackets and his kept him afloat as he was washed about in the waves. He had lost all sense of direction, but as the sun sank he realised which direction was west and struck out in the hope of reaching land or something. Night came on and he was freezing cold and nearly passed out, then the sun rose behind him and he made one last effort to swim westwards. By chance he stumbled across a fishing boat, and he waved down the captain. They took him aboard and carried him to America.
“I was stunned to think that all this time he had been alive and well! We talked for what seemed like hours, but was no doubt merely half-an-hour, then the nurse politely removed him. But afterwards, Clara, I felt so much happier, so much freer in my soul! My guilt was lifted and I could unburden myself and concentrate on healing.
“I started to talk then, to the nurses and the doctors. I told them my story. Arrangements were made to send me home. Passage in a ship was booked and the hospital in Brighton informed I would be arriving. The rest, well, is blatantly apparent.”
Captain O’Harris held out his hands to indicate his presence before Clara.
“I am so glad you came home,” Clara said softly. “I have missed you and I thought…”
Clara stopped herself and merely smiled.
“But what I thought doesn’t matter now. Here you are.”
“And it is good to see you well, too. And Tommy, I hardly believed my eyes when I saw him walking!”
Clara’s smile broadened.
“Tommy has been seeing a new doctor who has worked wonders on him.”
“Good for him! Now he can drive a car, I suppose? Hah! I shall have him in one of uncle’s old motors! They are all still in storage!”
Clara recalled the collection of cars Captain O’Harris had had at his home; treasured possessions of his late uncle who had been something of a motor fanatic. She was not entirely sure about the idea of letting Tommy drive one. Cars, in Clara’s opinion, were very dangerous things and far too prone to having inexplicable accidents.
“And once the house has been tarted up and restored, you will all naturally come over for supper. I am going to be lonely in that big place, especially
without the Buzzard to distract me,” O’Harris became sombre again. “I will miss her. I know she was only a biplane, but she was also a sort of friend. She was familiar, comfortable. I knew her inside out and when I was having a bad day I could always just fired up her engine and listen to her purring. Why she ditched like that I’ll never know, but one thing is for certain, she will be my last pair of wings. Some other fool can risk that crossing, I have had enough of laughing in the face of death.”
This was a revelation from a man who used to almost court death with a vengeance, feeling guilt that he had not died in the war like so many comrades. O’Harris had almost made it seem, before the events of last year, that he would be quite inclined to die in a plane crash. But then sometimes actually confronting your own mortality puts a different perspective on the whole thing. Clara was just glad to have him sitting beside her.
They talked for a while longer, then the bell rang to declare visiting time over. Clara rose, she turned to leave, then an impulse came over her and, after recent happenings, it seemed foolish to deny it. She leant over and kissed O’Harris on the cheek. Then she hurried away before she could see his response.
Chapter Twelve
Clara had only just arrived home from her visit to Captain O’Harris when the doorbell rang and Annie went to investigate. She soon returned to report that there was a police constable at the door asking for Clara. Clara rose from the dinner table and went to see what was the matter.
Police Constable Jones was one of the regulars she knew from the station. He gave her a polite nod before quickly reassuring her it was nothing to worry about, as such.
“No one is hurt, just a small incident at the Pavilion which the Inspector thought you might like to know about, miss.”
Clara was curious.
“What sort of incident?”
“Miss Sommers has been arrested for assaulting another of the women there. The woman says she was trying to kill her.”
Clara was surprised to hear that, so surprised she gave a start.
“Is Miss Sommers at the police station?”
The constable nodded.
“I best come at once,” Clara donned her hat and followed the constable back to the station. The evening was pleasantly warm and still light as they hastened down the road. Constable Jones was unable to enlighten Clara further as to what was going on, so she had to wait until they were at the station.
There she was greeted by the scowl of her old nemesis the desk sergeant, who looked upon her as a nuisance of unimaginable proportions. Constable Jones fortunately ushered her down a corridor to one of the station’s small rooms set aside for interviewing suspects. He opened the door to the room without warning and was greeted by the gruff voice of Inspector Park-Coombs.
“What in blazes are you doing?”
“Sorry sir,” Constable Jones flustered. “But you said to bring Miss Fitzgerald as fast as I could.”
Clara appeared just within the doorway, having avoided showing herself earlier in case she might receive some of the inspector’s outrage too. She saw that the inspector was sitting facing the door while, across the table from him, sat Abigail looking miserable and with her kohl make-up smudged from where she had been crying.
“You best come in Clara,” the inspector said grudgingly. “I think Miss Sommers could do with a friend right now.”
Abigail glanced up as Clara entered, her eyes made big by the smeared make-up.
“I haven’t tried to kill anyone,” she insisted. “But the Inspector seems to think I am behind all these awful deaths.”
“Not entirely true,” Park-Coombs grumbled. “But Miss Sommers does have a lot of explaining to do. I have finished my questions for the time being, perhaps you would like to sit with her Clara while I go supervise the search of her hotel room.”
“Is that necessary?” Clara asked, wondering what the inspector could possibly hope to find in the woman’s room.
“I think so,” the inspector raised an eyebrow at her. “But if you think you know a policeman’s job better than he does…”
“Not at all,” Clara quickly corrected herself, not wishing to offend the inspector. “I am clearly not up to speed with what is going on here.”
The inspector gave another grumble, then let himself out of the room. Clara was alone with Abigail, Constable Jones having vanished as soon as he was able to.
Abigail turned to her friend and gave a stifled sob.
“I didn’t kill anyone Clara.”
“Tell me what happened,” Clara said gently.
Abigail wiped at her eyes with her hand, she had lost her handkerchief at some point during all the commotion and her arrest.
“I am ruined,” she sniffed. “Oh Clara, how can things have gone so badly wrong?”
“Try explaining it all to me,” Clara pressed.
Abigail stared at her thumb which was now blackened with wet kohl.
“It was all because of that cow, Niamh,” she said sharply. “I shouldn’t call her names, but she is nothing but a trouble-maker!”
She dabbed at her eyes again, putting the running black make-up all over her hands.
“Niamh has hated me since we first met. She can’t stand the fact that I am the top representative in the south-east region rather than her and she thinks my sales figures have been doctored. They have not. I am just very good at what I do.”
Clara, having heard the other side of this tale, kept her mouth firmly shut and continued to listen.
“Niamh claimed she had evidence that I was being inventive with my sales figures,” Abigail continued. “She wanted to show me, I don’t know what she thought to prove. Maybe she thought she could frighten me into letting her take top spot as sales representative. I was not frightened. The papers she had come across were nothing to do with the sales figures, though she thought so. She began claiming that the sheets demonstrated that I had added numbers to my sales, when clearly they did not.”
Abigail shook her head.
“I shouldn’t have lost my temper, but this week has been hell,” Abigail groaned to herself. “My nerves are ripped to shreds and the last thing I needed was for Niamh to be spouting her lies about the place. When she showed me the papers I went to grab them off her and we struggled, nothing more, but in the process she was knocked over and sprawled on the floor. She began to scream and when people arrived she claimed I had punched her and threatened to kill her.
“The police have had a constable posted outside the Pavilion since we opened and he rushed in and heard Niamh’s nonsensical story. Of course I denied it, but he insisted I come down to the station. Technically I have been arrested, and yet I have done nothing wrong!”
“Rising to Niamh’s bait was not the best reaction,” Clara told her steadily. “Though I can understand why you snapped.”
“Jealousy is an awful thing Clara, and I am convinced it is behind all these awful events. But I am no murderer, what cause would I have to kill Esther or Mr Forthclyde? For that matter, when he died I was stood talking to you!”
That, at least, was very true.
“How do you manage to have such high sales figures compared to everyone else?” Clara asked. “Surely the others could achieve what you do?”
“I work hard Clara,” Abigail said steadily. “I work evenings and weekends, as well as during the day. I won’t take no for an answer and I have built up a very good client base. There is nothing fraudulent or dishonest about it. The other girls could do the same if they wanted to put the hours in, but they finish at six of an evening and avoid working weekends. Those are the times when I am most active and when I catch people unawares. In the evening people are tired and more likely to be persuaded to take on a large amount of stock, certainly larger than they would agreed to at another time. And at the weekend people don’t want to be bothered and will say anything to be rid of me. I pick my moments well and it pays off for me.”
“But that doesn’t stop people from being jealous,” Cla
ra noted.
“Should I stop being successful for their sakes?” Abigail asked angrily. “My figures are not remarkable when you compare them with other parts of the country. I am easily matched and beaten by the girls who work the London and surrounding counties region.”
Abigail sighed and looked at her spoilt hands.
“Niamh will make the most of this. She has wanted to ruin my reputation for so long.”
“It is only her word against yours,” Clara said calmly. “This will hopefully all blow over.”
“But with the other events that have taken place, it looks bad,” Abigail clutched her head in her hands. “Clara, this was such an important occasion for me. I won’t deny I thought it might open doors, perhaps lead to a management role. There are no women in the management level of Albion Industries currently, but times are changing. Women are taking on traditional male roles and proving themselves completely adept at them. I thought… I hoped…”
Abigail gave a sob.
“But it doesn’t matter now.”
She began to cry and Clara rested her hand lightly on her arm. It was hard to know what to say, how to console the poor woman. She felt very sorry for her because events really had gone out of her control.
“I’m so sorry Abigail.”
“If I knew how to change things I would do so. If I knew who was behind this catastrophe… but I don’t. Someone is out to harm me, I am certain of it.”
“Who?” Clara asked.
But once more Abigail shook her head.
“I don’t know. I can list people like Niamh who dislike me, but is that enough to try and ruin me? Niamh might think to accuse me of being dishonest, but she is not about to go out and kill someone and blame it on me.”
“Could it be someone from your past?”
“Like who?” Abigail demanded.
“I’m not sure, but it is easy to offend certain people. I was talking to Rowena Yardley only this morning for instance.”
“Rowena,” Abigail sighed deeply. “We were once such good friends, but she thought I would risk my position to help her. I would have liked to, but she was so very wrong for the job. She thought I could offer her work with Albion and we would travel about together like old chums, but that is not how this job works. I didn’t like to say it straight out, but she was just not the sort of person cut out for this industry. She had no interest in cosmetics, in fact she was rather dismissive of women who used them. How could I employ her? But she kept insisting and it was challenging to put her off. Eventually she got the message and stopped writing to me. Our friendship cooled after that. But I don’t consider her a murderer either.”
